An application store (also commonly referred to as an “app” store, “app” marketplace, or the like) is a type of digital distribution platform for application software that users may opt to install on devices of a particular type. In recent years, application stores have become a common component on personal computers, smartphones, tablets, and the like.
Application providers typically write an optionally-installable application for a given type of device and submit the application to an application-store provider, which makes the application available for users to purchase and/or download via an application store.
Once a user has installed such an application on a given device, the device may be able to use the application to access information payloads provided by the application provider and/or by third-parties. In many cases, an application provider may also provide a website that can be used to access at least some of the same information payloads that can be accessed by an optionally-installable application.
For example, a content provider, such as a blogging platform, social network, news portal, or the like, may provide a website by which posts, articles, or other information payloads may be accessed by web-browser software executing on remote devices. That content provider may also provide an optionally-installable application that can be obtained from an application store and, once installed, used to access some or all of the same posts, articles, or other information payloads.
In many cases, such a content provider may wish to promote its optionally-installable application for various reasons (e.g., a native application may provide a superior user experience than a website, the content provider may earn revenue when users obtain and use its optionally-installable application, or the like). To that end, many content providers detect when a visiting device is of a type for which an optionally-installable application is available so that their websites may notify the visitor that an optionally-installable application is available and/or encourage the visitor to obtain an optionally-installable application.
However, such app-promotion activities can detract from the user's experience with a given content provider. For example, in one common scenario, a user may encounter a link that purports to identify an information payload (e.g., an amusingly-captioned photograph of an adorable kitten) that the user wishes to view or otherwise consume. Upon following the link to a content provider's website, the user is presented not with an amusing and adorable kitten photograph, but with a notification indicating that the content provider has published an application available on the user's device.
If the user decides not to install the application, then the user may proceed to view the desired photograph in the device's web browser, being thereby amused by the cleverness of the caption and/or the adorableness of the kitten, but being deprived of whatever benefits the native application may provide.
On the other hand, if the user decides to obtain and install the application, the application typically does not “know” that the user was trying to access a particular photograph or other resource, often forcing the user to search for or independently navigate to the desired photograph from within the application. This is but one common scenario in which a content provider's application-promotion may hinder a user's ability to consume a desired information payload.
In an effort to address some of the shortcomings of previous application-promotion methods, in recent versions of the iOS operating system (provided by Apple Inc. of Cupertino, California), the Safari web browser includes a “Smart App Banner” feature. When the user visits a given page that has an “apple-itunes-app” meta tag, a “Smart App Banner” will automatically determine whether an indicated application is available for and installed on the user's device. When the indicated application is not installed on the user's device, tapping on the banner will opens the application's entry in the iOS App Store.
After the application is installed, if the user returns to the same page in the Safari web browser, tapping the banner will open the installed application, and the Safari web browser will pass to the application an URL (indicated in the “apple-itunes-app” meta tag of the page) that the application can use to present an appropriate resource to the user.
However, if the user launches the application from the iOS App Store, from the iOS Home Screen, from the iOS Spotlight Search, or via any other means, the application has no previously known method to determine, for example, that the user installed the application while attempting to access a particular web page.